Product Design Should Consider the Life – and End of Life

The last two articles I’ve written for the APICS magazine “Enterprise Insights” department (to be published in the January/February 2010 and March/April 2010 issues), deal with “green” and “sustainability”. In the second one, I wrote about designing a product with its end-of-life in mind – reuse, reprocessing, recycling, and responsible disposal. Coincidentally, the following item appeared in the SME Daily Executive Briefing on December 29, 2009:

Considering "End Of Life" Issues For Electronics Could Benefit Manufacturers.
The Chicago Tribune (12/28, Hopkins) reported on "Harrison Kim, an assistant professor in the University of Illinois Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at Urbana-Champaign." Kim studied the lifecycles of electronic gadgets and the associated costs, "and found that the time to think about...'end of life' issues is before the small electronics are even designed." Specifically, Kim "analyzed how design differences affect product recovery and determined that manufacturers are losing money by not reusing components." Fewer than 5 percent of retired phones "are recycled or reused." Kim said, "These are profits currently neglected." One way manufacturers could benefit, he said, is by designing products that were modular. Such products would also "appeal to the environmentally-savvy consumer."

There are regulations in Europe – RoHS and WEEE – that govern the electronics industry with specific requirements for recycling and safe disposal. You can be sure that the same kind of regulation will be implemented in the U.S. in the foreseeable future and similar regulation will apply to other industries as well as electronics. Why not get ahead of the game and start thinking about end-of-life in products you are designing today? Chances are good that this effort will pay off in future compliance as well as enhancing your image with an increasingly “green” oriented customer base. Read more articles by Dave Turbide at www.daveturbide.com or click here

The Lean Supply Chain

We are used to talking about Lean in the context of Lean Manufacturing and the techniques that are used to achieve Lean within our own plant – things like 5-S, Poka-Yoke and Kaizen. But how does Lean extend beyond the plant?

Extending Lean makes logical sense. Once we trim our own operations, reduce lead time and improve responsiveness, the path to further improvement leads outside of our own doors to the suppliers, customers, warehouses, transportation providers, and other supporting entities. Those entities can help get materials to us sooner and more in line with our needs and they can help speed products through the distribution chain to the end customer.

Some aspects of Lean naturally extend beyond our own four walls. Kanban replenishment, for example, works best when the suppliers are linked in to receive and respond to replenishment triggers directly. In most cases, this involves a blanket purchase agreement and a mechanism to signal releases (electronic kanban) directly to the supplier. However, other techniques that support Lean within the plant are not easily moved out into the broader world.

It's important not to confuse the techniques with the philosophy. Lean is a focus on adding value and eliminating those activities that don't add value (waste). Lean principles can be applied far beyond the plant floor – throughout the enterprise in such areas as customer service, administration and engineering – and throughout the supply chain. But the specific techniques used within the plant may or may not apply, or may need major rethinking to generate the kinds of improvements that we might expect and demand.

Applying Lean principles to the supply chain means enlisting trading partners in our efforts to drive out waste – it's not something we do by ourselves. The path to Lean in the supply chain can be summed up as CO-CO-CO-Collaboration

CO-operate: Establish the kind of close relationship with trading partners that will foster real cooperation to drive waste out of all activities both internal to the partner's operation and ‘in the seams' where product and information move between organizations. There has to be a certain level of trust between partners to enable such cooperation

CO-mmunicate: Open communication is the key to close cooperation. Electronic kanban is one example of communication on an operational level, but there also must be communication on a management and process improvement level to open new doors to waste elimination.

CO-ordinate: Collaboration is most visible in coordinated activities – smooth hand-offs of data and materials supported by joint efforts to link information and activities to eliminate delays, errors, miscommunication, or surprises.

All this adds up to collaboration, which the dictionary defines as working together, especially in a joint effort. Lean transformation within the plant can pay big dividends but the benefits of extending Lean thinking through the supply chain can be huge. To find out more about Lean Manufacturing visit www.daveturbide.com

Getting Green

The heart of the ‘green’ movement is reducing waste and doing what you can to save resources. Sound familiar? It should; that’s what resource management professionals have been focused on for many years. And that’s what ERP and related systems are focused on as well. So, if you are using ERP to reduce waste and make your operations more efficient, you’re already going green.

In addition to being fashionable and increasingly required by regulatory agencies and customers, green makes good business sense. For example, you are all aware of what has happened to energy prices over the last couple years – anything you can do to reduce energy use is both green and a money saver as well. The same logic applies to other resource preserving activities.

There’s another dimension to green – emphasis toward ‘renewable’ resources. There’s good news here, too, although it may not come right away. Renewable, in many cases, means not petroleum-based. While paper, soy bean, corn and other substitutes might be more expensive in the short term, it’s likely that they will be less volatile and there is a distinct marketing advantage to being able to say that you have eliminated or greatly reduced non-renewable content. It’s likely you’ll be forced in that direction eventually – either through shortages, regulatory pressures or customer demands.

One other aspect of the green movement that you should start thinking about is the content and origin labeling requirements that retailers, customers and regulatory agencies are becoming more interested in. New and evolving labeling requirements mandate that content and origin are traceable through the entire supply chain, so even if you are a second or third tier (or lower) supplier, your customers will be asking you for this information so they can pass it up the line. Compliance will certainly put additional strain on your procurement department and your database. To read more articles for manufacturing professionals go to www.daveturbide.com